The peanut
by planet p
Summary: AU; Major Charles, Ethan and Zoe travel to Arizona, but Ethan and Zoe are kidnapped by a sinister corporation. Will they ever make it out alive? Ethan/Zoe


**The peanut** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

**Author's Notes** My attempt at an Ethan/Zoe story, which ended up really rather rotten, and arguably, single-minded, with hints of Rooney/Blake.

As it is, this story was written half a year to two years ago, my memory's not so clear at this point.

AU, of course.

Rated M.

* * *

The room, all white paint and frosted glass, had only one structure – a metal bed. Ethan's gaze wandered across the room to the woman who would be his breeding partner. A jolt of recognition turned his stomach and he wanted to be sick. The woman was entirely naked and her red hair had been shaved almost clean away. She sat huddled in the centre of the bed, knees hugging her chest. Ethan tried to think what use she was to them but came up blank. She didn't have the anomaly. He didn't understand why they had been put on the Program together. But he was wasting time, and they were watching, they were always watching. He strode across the room and settled on the edge of the bed for a moment. He had to do something or else they'd both be reprimanded. The idea that he may have to force himself on her only strengthened the urge to be sick, the idea that it would be less painful than whatever they may do to her for her inadequacy.

He turned and placed a hand gently on her foot. He would have said anything, were they permitted to exchange conversation, which they were not. She did not lift her face from her knees. She knew what had to be done, they would have told her, the way they had told him.

Climbing onto the bed, some sort of hard plastic polymer, translucent and tinted green, showing the metal framework beneath as though the bones of some great dead whale, Ethan knelt before the despondent woman.

He kneaded her feet and ankles with his hands in the hopes she would meet his eyes. She did not. He pushed his hands up the length of her lower leg to her knees where he took her chin and pushed her face up to meet his own, her eyes a set of empty staring shells. There was nothing in her eyes to give away any indication of her feelings. He pressed her backward with one hand and spread her legs at the knee with the other. Spine pressed into hard plastic, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as though she could see through the foundations, up through the many floors and rooms, the earth and soil, right out into the heavens above. Shoving his slacks down his thighs, the stiffness of starchy new material grating on his skin, he lowered himself onto the woman, pushing down the wave of hot sickness that had come up from his chest.

The sex was clumsy at first; the woman beneath him could have been more easily mistaken for a life-size rag doll than a living, breathing being.

Ethan fell down beside the woman and stared up at the ceiling. There was no movement from the woman beside him. She breathed, of course, but otherwise no movement. She could well have been a rag doll.

* * *

_Ethan shifted his sluggish, prickly gaze, his breath tired in his chest__. His toffee-coloured eyes fell from the comic he had been reading, coming to rest on a pair of crossed legs, canvas flats dotted with little black skull and bones. His gaze followed the shoes up to a pair of black blast jeans where instead of a waistband or belt, coal black was met with bunches of banana yellow tee shirt: thick horizontal white stripes, bib shaped neckline; short sleeves._

_Zoe, brown cow eyes wide in expectancy and anticipated disappointment, ginger zigzag mop, was immersed in a romance novel, a tooth absently pinching her bottom lip. Ethan watched her for a moment but not even his abominable glower seemed able to drag her, tooth and claw, from the pages of her novel._

_Charles sat beside Ethan, unspeaking. The darkened windows passed darkened landscapes. The train rode on._

_The train__ stopped at a station in Arizona. Nobody was waiting for them at the platform._

_Zoe sat down at a wooden bench beside a kiosk that was closed._

_Charles stood a while as he consulted a local directory board, colour faded to yellows and blues behind the scratched Perspex._

_Ethan hunched against the bitter early morning cold, arms folded across his chest, fingers curled into his hands._

* * *

The next day, he was taken back to the breeding chambers. What he could see of Zoe was dark with bruising. Ethan didn't understand why they were doing this, what they wanted, but he understood what the bruises meant: he had to try harder to make this work.

He hated himself for what he had done, for what he would do again, but what else was there to be done? The drugs suppressed his Inner Sense so that if he had wanted to get a message out somehow, that avenue was gone now. There was nothing else to do. And all the while he had the horrible sense he was destroying a person the way the Centre had done to so many before. But these people were not the Centre.

She did not shake from cold or out of fear or uncertainty, she just sat there, knees to her chest, chin on her knees, dark eyes empty.

With not so much care, she lay back and waited for him to do his thing, but it was little consolation for Ethan. It was resignation and resignation made him angry. He wanted to hit things, hurt things, but he had to suppress that urge – the only other person in the room was as innocent as he was.

They would hurt her again, he thought as he tried not to think on the task at hand.

* * *

The third time he was taken to the breeding chambers he thought how far it was from anything the Centre had ever done – a breeding program.

Zoe was not sitting on the bed, she was already lying, but when he drew nearer he noticed that she was not still and the look on her face as tears streamed from her eyes was not one of comfort.

Ethan rushed forward to help her, but there was nothing to help. They had given her some drug and he could do nothing but watch her writhe in pain whilst they expected him to recreate with her in that state.

Ethan was not an angry person by nature. Glum, but not angry.

Ethan kicked everything in there and screamed and smacked his fists into the wall, whilst Zoe lay in horrible pain on a hard bed which wasn't even her own. Ethan expected them to come in and get him out. They didn't, but they were watching, they never gave up watching.

He stormed across the room and collected Zoe in his arms. He held her tight to his chest, but when his hold slackened, she fell right out of his grasp and smacked down on the hard bed. He pulled his shirt off and tugged Zoe back up, wrapping the black cotton around her bare shoulders and back. He hugged her tight and blinked at the stinging in his eyes. A hollow sound came from her throat at the pain, her muscles locked in uncontrollable spasm. He kissed her neck and shoulder through the shower of tears in his eyes. He couldn't let go.

It was a long while before she fell limp in his hold, and he just sat there with her clutched to him and prayed silently that she could somehow get through this. He felt the beating of her heart against his chest. He would let her sleep.

He awoke suddenly and cussed. Frantic that they had taken her again, he realised that she was still there, right there in his arms. But he couldn't calm down. He stared into Zoe's brown eyes and wished she would say something to him. Anything to let him know she was still inside there, anything to let him know there was something still worth fighting for.

Her hand, fingers outspread, shifted from his leg, slid across his abdomen with a horrible tingling sensation and moved up his chest. He opened his mouth to tell her that she didn't have to do this. Her lips joined her hands and she placed light kisses upon his chest, the tiniest touch of her tender and bitten lips grazing his nipple.

Her palms flat to his chest, mouth hovering close beside her hand, she breathed into his chest. "I want to forget. Please help me." Her hot breath, intermittent, and the heat of her lips as they moved, dangerously close, sent an involuntary shiver through his back.

His lips were dry and tasted of salt from his tears and a runny nose. He wanted to tell her no, but her mouth was on his as her head bobbed up from his chest and she rose on her knees, coming down upon him, and he couldn't speak. Her hands glided soothingly over his shoulders, downwards to the small of his back where he felt a shiver rise as she brought him closer to her, her hands coming round the front to work with the buttons. His hands joined her own and she rolled her pressed breasts against his chest in her fervour to be lost. The jeans were tugged and heaved until they were off. She fell down upon him, her hands in his hair, on his abdomen, pulling and tugging for them to be joined.

What he was doing was wrong. She was sick, she wasn't herself. But he only wanted to help her feel better, to help her forget that horrible pain.

She rocked frantically in his lap, clutching tight to him, and groaned into his neck and hair as though in discomfort.

His stomach felt like molten lava and he couldn't keep his breathing steady, a little gasp kept sneaking in here and there.

Zoe clutched his upper arms, her wet mouth all over his left shoulder, and fixed her wide eyes on the wall behind them.

Ethan took her arms and pulled her away from him, lowering her to the bed. Zoe's wide eyes darted frantically across his own.

He kissed her knees and took her as she beckoned him nearer, weaving her fingers between his.

Much later, he lay in her arms, her thumb drawing little circles on his shoulder. She pressed her warm lips to his chest. "Thank you."

* * *

He cleaned floors. It made no sense to him, but that was his job, to clean floors. They had to know he had the anomaly. They had given him drugs to suppress his abilities. They had even put him on the breeding program, they just weren't interested in doing anything with him.

Sometimes he wondered if Charles was looking for Zoe and he, and why they had even come to Arizona. He didn't even know if they were even still in Arizona. And sometimes he just wished he knew what they wanted.

Apparently all they wanted him for was to clean floors.

He rarely saw another person, that was the way his rotation worked, but he knew they knew what he was doing at all times.

He hadn't seen Zoe for too many weeks to count – twenty-two, he was almost certain it had been – and he hadn't been taken back to the breeding chambers. He wondered if Zoe was still alive, and cleaned floors.

* * *

A woman passed in a joining hall. Ethan tried not to stare but it was hard. He hardly saw anyone these days, save one or two of those he supposed served the function of a Sweeper.

The woman wore red and black polyvinyl, all plastic snap buckles and chunky boots. She looked to be in her early twenties. A clear plastic card the size of a credit card but clearly heavier and thicker swung clipped to her belt. In the motion the light caught in it and Ethan saw that a human heart wrapped in barbed wire or thorned vine – constricted in parts and bulging in others – stood out in the centre of the card as though frosted there. All this he observed in barely a second as the woman passed. But then she stopped.

Ethan dropped his eyes to the floor in fear. The woman turned and paused, pondering her next course of action. A pleasant smile graced her face as she approached him. "You!" she called out. Ethan didn't look up all at once, causing the woman considerable irritation. "Maintenance?" she chimed, impatient. Slowly he looked up. "I don't bite!" the woman joked.

Ethan did not speak. She looked human, but the red and black of her clothes was a status symbol, he had come to realise. Having colour in your clothes meant you were someone, and in nature red meant danger. The Sweepers wore maroon and black.

"I am Penny," the young woman blurted uncharacteristically. The tone and manner of her speech suggested privilege. He wasn't sure conversing with this woman was an altogether bright idea.

Penny grinned. "What is your name? You do have a name?"

"Ethan," Ethan told her, cautious.

"I like. Very much. Soo-pah!" She straightened, her grin falling away, and turned to go. Pausing, she turned back and dipped her hand into a pocket, pressing a small object into his palm. With a small smile, she left. Ethan watched her until she was no longer to be seen, and then he dropped his face and examined the object she had awarded him. It seemed to be white and sugar-covered, about the size of a peanut. He hastily popped it in his mouth. It _was_ a peanut.

He set about his job once more, feeling a twinge of guilt inside.

* * *

Penny liked to come to see him sometimes. She never spoke much, she just liked to watch him, and often she would give him a sugared peanut before she left. She was very confusing. Ethan supposed she might like him. It was not a comforting thought.

* * *

"All this cleaning," Penny told him in exasperation, but did not finish, or perhaps she did not know that there _was_ anything _to_ finish, perhaps it was simply an exclamation of an observation. She sighed a heavy sigh.

Ethan always felt a little uncomfortable with her watching him, but he could not very well tell her to go. She would leave of her own accord.

Penny strolled up to him. "All this cleaning," she repeated, and shook her head at the silliness of it, reaching into her pocket for a peanut. She did not find him threatening, that much was clear.

Ethan took the offering, the corner of his eye twitching when her hand touched his.

She slammed him into the wall, leaving him little time for disbelief, and planted her lips on his. Shocked, he didn't move. Her lips tasted like sugar and he supposed it was from sweets. Hands in his hair, she breathed unevenly into his mouth. The peanut had fallen from his hand and he could not see it, he could see little beside her big blue eyes; like saucers, he imagined, blue saucers with a large spot of black in the middle, but so much blue. Stupidly, he kissed her back. What else could it have been but stupid?

She pulled back abruptly, away from his kiss. Ethan could have knocked himself out on the wall, but she was still watching him. He wished she would stop. "You taste good," she told him. He didn't know what to say. She took another sudden step back, turned, and left.

He stared at the wall opposite for some time, and then his eyes caught on some small object on the floor and he bent down to retrieve his peanut.

* * *

He woke and the warder came in to accompany him, only, the route wasn't the same as before. He had to stop himself from asking where they were going. It was only when he reached the door that he realised where he was. There was a split second where he thought about turning and running, but it was just his mind playing tricks on him. That would be a stupid thing to do, a stupid thing for both of them, whoever the other was.

He moved into the room, his eyes darting to that horrible bed. Zoe looked up from her hands, and for a moment he thought she had been crying, but she must just have been thinking, there being no tears. The baby was gone now, but it was obvious that it hadn't been long ago.

He hurried across the floor and sat down on the bed, but did not turn to face her.

She came up behind him and placed her arms around his chest in a hug, her head on his shoulder. She hummed quietly in his ear.

He turned to her and took her shoulders, laying her down. She brought a hand up to his cheek and they kissed. It was good to be held by someone who cared about him.

* * *

He kissed the inside of her thighs, her abdomen, her breasts, her neck. She fastened her legs around him, took his hands in hers to let him know it was alright. He moved slowly and she watched him watching her. "Faster," she whispered, teasing, and he took her up on the offer. She moved her hands over his back and mouthed his upper arms. He turned his head to capture her lips and she giggled into his mouth.

* * *

Ethan sat awake in the dark and traced the weals on his arms, shoulders and neck, and once, where Zoe had bitten him in the upper arm and he had joked that they must have been holding back on her protein cubes.

* * *

"The wall," she whispered, standing in the middle of the room, her lips on his ear. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. She set her hands on the buttons on her pants, and helped him with his when hers were done. "Hopeless," she breathed, and he blushed, embarrassed.

He scooped her up and pressed her against the wall. She smiled into his neck and gave his ear a playful tug with her teeth. "This is better." She swirled her tongue around in his ear and he leant his head away from her and giggled. She twined her fingers in his hair and licked the side of his face and in his ear, letting him know he was not going to get away so easily.

* * *

The next day, he cleaned. Penny found him but didn't approach him. She just stood there and glared. He pretended to ignore her, as though he genuinely hadn't seen her standing there glaring at him like that. Her horrible glare continued. Finally, when she had had enough, she came storming over. "I looked for you," she told him harshly, taking him roughly by the arms.

"I had other things to do," he replied, watching her for her reaction.

Penny released her hold on his arms. "I have other things to do all-so!" She turned abruptly on her heel and left without leaving a peanut.

Ethan kept his mouth shut. _Idiot, idiot, idiot,_ he cursed to himself in his head. _You idiot, Ethan!_

* * *

A hand grabbed his shoulder and he was afraid to turn. Another hand came up and spun him to face its owner. Ethan was almost relieved to see that it was only Penny, tiny little Penny.

Tiny little Penny shoved him back with all her might, which was considerably more than he had expected, considering how small she was. He came up against the wall and his eyes dropped to Penny's hands. She held out a handful of sugar-coated peanuts to him. Ethan wanted to laugh although he had a fair idea this wasn't a laughing matter. He tried to think of how best to tell her he didn't want all those peanuts, that he in fact didn't want her peanuts at all, but the look on her face kept distracting him.

"I- I-"

Penny shoved them at him.

"No," he told her, shaking his head once. "I don't want your sweets."

The young woman's expression changed horribly fast and she threw all of those peanuts at him and stalked off.

"Penny?" Ethan called after her, and took chase. "Penny?"

Penny didn't show the slightest indication of having heard him.

Ethan stopped and stood stupidly in the middle of the hall.

* * *

He heard footsteps and turned just in time to see Penny come stomping up to him, her expression set.

"I want you to have my babies," she informed him. Ethan took half a step backward, utterly confused. "I want you to make my babies!" And with that she seized hold of him and wrapped her little legs and little arms around him and kissed him.

Ethan grabbed hold of her arms, pushing his panic down, and pulled her apart from him. "No, no, no. Penny." He heaved a sigh and watched her carefully as though to ward her off kissing him just at that moment. Penny stared back at him hungrily. "I can't have your babies, men don't have babies," he explained to a mildly confused Penny, "and as to making your babies, I don't think that would be allowed."

Penny's face grew angry and she growled. "Penny can have anything Penny wants!" she warned gruffly. "I want Ethan!"

"I clean floors. I don't think you want someone who cleans floors."

Penny let go of him.

Ethan opened his mouth to thank her and was slapped. Penny stormed off around the corner, leaving Ethan to rub his cheek. God, that hurt!

* * *

Ethan slept fitfully. He dreamt of his mother, of Catherine, asleep, but when he took in the room around the woman, the surroundings, various objects, he realised that this was not his mother at all, but that it was his half sister, Miss Parker.

He needed desperately to reach out, needed desperately to communicate, to scream, shout, to convey his situation to her somehow. Help me! Help us! Miss Parker turned over in her sleep, restless as he was. He drew closer and reached out to touch her arm, to give her a gentle shake – Help! – when suddenly the bedroom and its sleeping occupant evaporated. The connection, failed, was replaced by a horrible feeling of what could only be described as sensory overload.

Ethan thrashed on his bed, pulling him from his restless slumber. He sat up, drawing his knees to his chest, and trembled.

* * *

Ethan rubbed at the side of his face. A horrible red rash had come up there. The skin was hardened and cracked. Blood came off on his fingers and palm. He stared in shock and wonder at the bright red colour.

The co-ordinator found him lying on the floor, cheek without the rash to the cold floor. His arms were covered in that same rash.

He wasn't sure of much. He regained consciousness in a simultaneously bright and dim room. It took some moments before he realised the lights were pulsating in time with a pulsing rhythm. A woman approached him: dark hair, long enough to brush her ankles. Her face was round, and her soft brown eyes filled it up, so very wide. They comforted him just to see them. Her pretty face was covered in tattoos, over her right eye, along her left cheek. Her hands were covered in similar tattoo, as were her bare feet.

"How do you feel?" Her voice floated to him from a faraway place.

"I- I don't know," he replied in a raspy voice. He didn't understand what was wrong with him. He couldn't breathe properly, his lungs were too dry, he was too hot.

The woman placed a hand over his forehead. Her eyes shone momentarily and the brown in them seemed to change.

His back arched and he convulsed.

* * *

Ethan woke and lurched off the bed. The Healer lay at his feet on the floor, a pool of blood trickling from her mouth, her eyes too wide, the brown of the irises so dark they shone the colour of black coffee, blending in with her pupils.

Ethan stumbled back and came up against the bed. His mind raced. He took deep breaths to calm himself, and felt as though he would pass out. He dropped to the floor beside the woman. He reached out a shaking hand for her face, blood bubbles slipping out of her mouth and swirling in the great pool of blood. The whites of her eyes began to stain red. He ran a hand over his face and up through his hair. This wasn't happening.

His head burst with pain and he keeled over beside the woman, clutching his head. Through his pain, his vision fell in and out of vision. A boy of about fifteen came from somewhere across the room. The boy had dark hair, blue eyes, and wore a red check shirt and jeans. Ethan laughed irrationally. Considering the setting, the boy's clothes were hilarious. Next he comprehended, the boy was on the floor with him. He took Ethan in his arms and stroked the side of his face. "I am sorry, brother. The connection did not take as I had anticipated. I fear this was my own failing. I overestimated the bond I had attempted to set up between Miss Parker and yourself. I can only say that I had been assured that it had gone ahead soundly. I am sorry. It was never my intention for either of you, yourself or Miss Parker, to be hurt, brother." The boy smiled sadly.

Ethan winced, the pain in his head subsiding now. "That woman…?"

The boy shut his eyes momentarily. The light shone in the tiny beads of tears on his lashes, as though they were diamonds. A tear ran down his cheek and into his mouth. "It hurts," he spoke in a trembling uneven voice. "So much."

Ethan struggled to sit.

The boy's cheeks were flooded with tears. He crawled across the floor and lay down facing the Healer. "Don't go," he begged, and kissed his shaking bloody fingers, pressing them to her cheek.

"Bobby." Ethan pulled himself to his feet and staggered across the room. Leaning down, he wrenched his howling brother away from the woman.

Bobby scratched his bitten fingers across the floor, smearing blood in parallel lines out from the pool as though they were rays of light. The boy thrashed and struggled in Ethan's hold.

The woman's eyes rolled in her head.

Bobby bit Ethan hard in the arm and the elder released his hysterical brother. Ethan swore and stared after the boy. Bobby went skidding across the floor and slid on the blood. He rolled the woman over, her eyes staring into the back of her head rather than the ceiling. He straddled the woman. His hands shook on the cotton of her plain white dress, big white buttons from top to bottom. The boy ripped the buttons down from the top and placed his hands firmly on her chest, leaning his weight in on his wrists. Bobby howled in pain, but seemed unable to move. An eerie silence fell on the room and Ethan stared in horror as objects started to lift up off the floor, metal objects. The lights had died, but a new light had started and it came from within the boy. A light with tentacles and tendrils, that strengthened and weakened and strengthened again. Ethan stood transfixed but knew that this could not be happening.

* * *

Ethan drank what he supposed was water from a flimsy white plastic cup. Whatever Bobby had done it had knocked Ethan out. He had come to on a crisp white bed. Bobby was nowhere to be seen. The woman, however, lay in a bed not far off, connected to all sorts of monitors and fancy machines. A man stood across the room: late forties, early fifties. Ethan could tell he was there for the woman's sake. He hadn't taken his eyes off her in all the time he had been watching the man. The man, when he noticed Ethan was indeed awake, pulled himself away from watching the woman and moved to find the younger a drink. Ethan thanked the man and lay back, his head buzzing. "It was me," he told the man. "It was because of me. There is something wrong with me." He reached a hand to his cheek but the rash was gone. "Inside, there is something wrong with me inside."

The man glanced across at the sick woman and back to the young man.

* * *

The Healers dressed in white. They came and took him for tests. He had all sorts poked into him and prodded at him. He was afraid they might cut him open whilst still alive. They took samples of this and that and the twenty millilitres of blood made him faint so that he had to lie back, a sick feeling in his stomach.

He caught a glimpse of Zoe and swore he was dreaming. She was with two others dressed in black, four or five Healers, and a warder. They were talking but he could not tell what of. His vision was all over the place, his hearing shot. He might have been given a sedative.

He fell into dreamless slumber and woke again to find the ward empty. Zoe had not been there. It had been yet another dream. He wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't anymore.

He sat, sore all over, and pinched his thigh hard. It took a half second for the pain response to register. He swore at the stinging sensation. That would turn into a bruise later.

* * *

He was given gloppy soup as so-called nourishment, and drank three cups of water before lying back down.

He awoke to raised voices. Zoe, falling in and out of focus, appeared upset. "No, no. You can't do it," she told a Healer. "You'll kill him," she pleaded for the Healer to change his mind.

A young woman in white, another Healer, inserted something into her neck and Zoe fell limp in the hold of a warder. The other two in black said nothing.

The Healer spoke to his team and turning, started toward Ethan's bed.

* * *

The man who had given him water that first time since waking up and finding his imagined brother gone, explained that he was going to sleep for a while. They were going to give him something to make him sleep, but he would be alright. It would all be alright when he woke up.

He looked around for any signs of Zoe, but of course, there were none.

A Healer inserted something into his arm and his head fell to one side. He had died. The heart monitor ran flat. Now came the wait.

* * *

The man wore red and black, Ethan realised. Penny's colours. Ethan supposed he was somebody important. He was Rooney, the man told him, his dark hair and eyes the same blue as Penny's. The woman was named Blake. She was very special to him and he couldn't imagine ever living if she did not. Ethan wanted to laugh at the shear silliness, but he worried for Zoe and Bobby, who wasn't even real.

"There was a woman," he began in a voice like gravel. "She has red- red hair."

"The Pretender is as well is to be expected," Rooney told him, and Ethan shook his head.

"You don't understand! She-she isn't- She's dying! She has cancer and she's dying. It's going to kill her and there's nothing anyone can do about it!"

Rooney frowned sadly and sat heavily on the bed beside Ethan, gazing away from Ethan and instead at the wall.

* * *

Ethan legs carried him across the room, his brain switched off. Zoe lay on the bed, curled into herself. Ethan sat beside her and squeezed her shoulder.

"The baby came early," Zoe murmured, sniffing horribly.

"Heeeeyyy," Ethan soothed, holding out his arms. "Come here."

Zoe sat and fell into his arms, her head on his chest, tears wetting his shirt. Ethan kissed her hair, a mop of short tight red curls.

"They told me you were a Pretender." He sighed and spoke into her hair.

Zoe sobbed quietly. "I never wanted to be anything but Zoe. But not even that is the truth."

Ethan held her close. "I don't quite understand."

"Everything is just one big fat lie after the other," she sobbed horribly. "Zoe was my sister's name. She was the good one of the two of us."

"No, no, no, no, no," Ethan told her. "You're a good person, Zoe."

"Syke," she corrected. "My name is Syke."

"Syke," Ethan repeated and wrapped his arms tighter around her. "I love you, Syke."

"Don't," Zoe whispered miserably.

"I love you, Syke."

"You can't love someone you don't know. You can't love someone who does nothing but lie. You can't love me."

Ethan grinned. "I love you. And I think you love me too. Love, like belief, is blind. Let me be blind, Syke. Let me love you." He kissed her ear and her tears. Zoe shook her head. "Stop me." He took her face in his hands and kissed her mouth.

She shook all over but she didn't stop him.

* * *

Penny came to him in his room. She shook him awake and he recoiled. "You have to go," she told him. "You take Zoo-ee and little children, and go. She should be happy when she dies. You go now." She stood by the door waiting for him to follow. "I take you to Zoo-ee."

Ethan slipped off the bed and joined her at the door.

Penny looked up from the floor, into his eyes. "I guess this means goodbye, Ethan."

Ethan frowned.

Penny leant forward and placed a quick kiss on his lips. "We go now."

* * *

Penny led him through the halls to the habitation level where Zoe was housed. Zoe was awake. She sat rocking on her bed, a hand on her stomach as she hummed a lullaby for the unborn child.

She looked up and when she saw Ethan, frowned. "It's okay, Syke," Ethan told her. "It's okay now. Come here. Come into my arms."

Zoe slid off the bed and huddled in his arms. She didn't ask who the young woman was, and Ethan didn't tell.

* * *

The children slept, one nine months, the other three. Ethan carried the eldest and Zoe the little one.

Penny took them up and out. She took a car she said was her brother, Rooney's. Zoe hugged her baby as though it was the only certain thing. Ethan watched the stars through the front right-hand window and pretended he was little again, hugging the little child to his chest.

The night was cold. Ethan stood on the platform with Zoe and Penny and the little ones. And then Penny was gone and Ethan took the money she had given him to buy tickets for the train.

Zoe sat with her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed, and he watched night slip away into the first tendrils of day. He didn't know where they were headed, but wherever it was was home as long as they were together.

* * *

_For those who are interested, or were simply wondering, this story takes place in a facility of one of the Center's rivals, a fictitious corporation known as T-Corp, also mentioned in _Once more, for science_._

_Blake is also mentioned in _Flamingo pie_, as the daughter of Nash._

_This story is not related to either of the aforementioned stories._

_I could not find any Ethan/Zoe stories, so I decided to write one, so if you read this and you know of any, I would be happy for you to point them out to me._

_All feedback is appreciated._


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